Star Trek Online Catch-All

Yep we made a Klingon fleet back in Aug/Sep finally... I think it's just Klingons With Jobs.

I'm the only one I've seen on that side lately though, even with the F2P influx of goodjers. Just let me know what your Klingon's name@name is and I'll send an invite. I think you can send them offline now?

Maltz. Cho-ee-choo and junk.

I'd LOVE to wrangle one of you pros into a Steam chat to go over my character. I feel like I need a consultant. If I could reward you with virtual beer, I would. As it stands, you'll have to settle for that nasty-ass-Tuleberry wine.

LockAndLoad wrote:
InspectorFowler wrote:

I hate the whole "common replicable" and "common unreplicable" materials. Where do you even find those?

There is a broker at Memory Alpha that sells them for dilithium. Common is 10 dil, Uncommon is 1000 dil. Or you pay 100k or more on the Exchange for an Uncommon.

Yeah,but seriously, that's like spending 30,000 dilithium for ONE component in a set of dual heavy cannons. That's roughly 4-6 weeks of duty officer assignments for me.

docbadwrench wrote:

Maltz. Cho-ee-choo and junk.

John Larroquette is a badass. Represent.

docbadwrench wrote:

I'd LOVE to wrangle one of you pros into a Steam chat to go over my character. I feel like I need a consultant. If I could reward you with virtual beer, I would. As it stands, you'll have to settle for that nasty-ass-Tuleberry wine. :)

Do we still have a decided upon Vent channel? I don't think we ever had an official "STO" one, but at one point, we hung out in one of the defunct channels. Is it worth trying to organize something like this, now that we have a healthy number of players returning?

For my part, I don't have anything useful to suggest with regards to character progression. I tend to put mine away willy nilly in things I find important, which is primarily space weapons and certain "space power" areas (e.g. Deflectors).

InspectorFowler wrote:
LockAndLoad wrote:
InspectorFowler wrote:

I hate the whole "common replicable" and "common unreplicable" materials. Where do you even find those?

There is a broker at Memory Alpha that sells them for dilithium. Common is 10 dil, Uncommon is 1000 dil. Or you pay 100k or more on the Exchange for an Uncommon.

Yeah,but seriously, that's like spending 30,000 dilithium for ONE component in a set of dual heavy cannons. That's roughly 4-6 weeks of duty officer assignments for me.

Well... is a $1.50 in CPoints worth your time? That's how I rationalized it. I skipped 4 of my morning coffees last week to justify the real money cost of some STO upgrades.

InspectorFowler wrote:
LockAndLoad wrote:
InspectorFowler wrote:

I hate the whole "common replicable" and "common unreplicable" materials. Where do you even find those?

There is a broker at Memory Alpha that sells them for dilithium. Common is 10 dil, Uncommon is 1000 dil. Or you pay 100k or more on the Exchange for an Uncommon.

Yeah,but seriously, that's like spending 30,000 dilithium for ONE component in a set of dual heavy cannons. That's roughly 4-6 weeks of duty officer assignments for me.

There's other ways to get Dilithium though; just from dailies at 50 you can come up with around 8k/day if not more.

Just an FYI, I threw a Horta pet into the Tribble section of the Fleet bank for anyone that wants one.

Also, if anyone is still waiting on a Fed Fleet invite, let us know.

The Cardassian Lock Boxes are starting to piss me off.

Nevin73 wrote:

Just an FYI, I threw a Horta pet into the Tribble section of the Fleet bank for anyone that wants one.

Also, if anyone is still waiting on a Fed Fleet invite, let us know.

The Cardassian Lock Boxes are starting to piss me off.

No kidding. I started a new character a couple days ago, and was doing the starter mission where you have to scan an asteroid that's surrounded by about 50 mines. I'm sure I got at least a dozen lock boxes just from the mines alone.

Between my Tac Officer and my Engineer, I have near as makes no difference 200 lock boxes. The only annoying thing about them is the amount of space they take up.

I have no idea what lock boxes you guys are talking about. Of course I haven't ran a mission in probably 2 weeks, just login to set my DOFFS once or twice a day.

Stele wrote:

I have no idea what lock boxes you guys are talking about. Of course I haven't ran a mission in probably 2 weeks, just login to set my DOFFS once or twice a day. :D

I had 300 CP lying around, so I opened up three of those lock boxes. What I got were Rare (Blue) consoles and shields. I added the "less good" shield to the Fleet Bank.

I agree it's silly to pay CP for such things, but at least it's not giving me "Uncommon" stuff.

I got a galor ship on the first one. Sold it on the exchange for 100million, but forgot about the credit cap until after the ship sold. 90million down the drain, and after 7 days waiting for a reply on the ticket I submitted, a GM told me there wasn't anything they could do.

The whole experience left a bit of a sour taste in my mouth with the boxes.

Stele wrote:

I have no idea what lock boxes you guys are talking about. Of course I haven't ran a mission in probably 2 weeks, just login to set my DOFFS once or twice a day. :D

The Cardassian 'wring your wallet out for CP' Lock Boxes.

PurEvil wrote:

I got a galor ship on the first one. Sold it on the exchange for 100million, but forgot about the credit cap until after the ship sold. 90million down the drain, and after 7 days waiting for a reply on the ticket I submitted, a GM told me there wasn't anything they could do.

The whole experience left a bit of a sour taste in my mouth with the boxes.

I dunno, making 100 mil off of one doesn't sound so bad. Forgetting to uncap your EC though.. that definitely sucks.

AnimeJ wrote:

There's other ways to get Dilithium though; just from dailies at 50 you can come up with around 8k/day if not more.

Wait, what kinds of dailies? Solo stuff? 'Cause I'm down with that. Fleet stuff is pretty meh - spend 25 minutes fighting the Borg and get nothing? No thanks.

Also - I'll open the Gold Lock Boxes (I've only gotten one, and got a really decent self-leveling console from it) but I just discard the regular ones, they don't even sell for 1 credit apiece.

I love all this strategi-babble that I don't yet understand. It gives me something to look forward to.

Along that line, I'd love to lob some newbie softball at the lot of you: I'm on the verge of hitting level 30. I've only recently begun to understand the Duty Officer stuff. I'm still struggling with understanding just what decent bridge crew abilities to get. And while I can do a ton of additional research (and trust me, I will), I'd rather ask some advice so I can throw my money at some of the solutions.

I realize I'm a science officer and all, but once I can afford a Defiant, I'm getting one. Along with that, I'd like to outfit the thing with some cool weapons. Right now, I've just been paging through whatever I pick up as loot. I haven't been hitting the exchange because I'm a bit out of my depth.

My eventual goal is to be a cloaky-hit-and-runny ship. I'm going to train one of my bridge officers to get that ability that lets you suppress your energy signature (the poor man's cloak, I guess). My most fun thing to do (so far) is to move in real fast, real close, and be a mosquito in the face.

My question for you pros: What should I try to acquire? I'd love some very general advice that takes my basic aim to heart. I have a mess of raw materials, but I have nowhere near the skill needed to create something cool.

I'm not expert, having only just hit 30 on my main myself, but from what I could tell, crafting is more useful for the good stuff than relying on the exchange. I've been raiding and re-stocking the fleet bank a good bit over the past couple of days (starting shortly after I announced that I had no interest in crafting what-so-ever) and my ship gear quality jumped up quite a bit in the process.

All of this is based on what I've messed around with...

Shields have 10% bleedthrough, so what does that mean? 10% damage leaks through and hits the hull I assume, these are the damage numbers you see in combat.

Yes. I have been playing strictly as an Engineer with Cruiser class ships and in all honesty, I haven't seen much difference in the absorb vs. bleed debate. With a 5% absorb you are increasing your survivability by what, 2 or 3 energy weapon shots? It might add up over time but I haven't been impressed with shield regen or absorb in the late game. I will say this though, consoles with plasma shield resistances have noticably helped me survive during the Borg "Red Alert" event. And I have polaron resist consoles in the bank for when I get to the Dominion story arc.

I used the Hargh'Peng Torpedoes all the way until level 45. They slam hard but once you can get Mark X / Mark XI torpedos and use BOff abilities to fire spreads or high yields you'll do a lot more damage. Also, for the torpedo builds, make sure you assign your Projectile Weapon DOffs to Active duty. They'll give you a % chance for a quick reload.

My question for you pros: What should I try to acquire? I'd love some very general advice that takes my basic aim to heart. I have a mess of raw materials, but I have nowhere near the skill needed to create something cool.

I'm not a pro or a tactical guy so I have no idea... There's a "stealth" attribute for some items but you have to have a cloak to use which I haven't played with. I have max'd out crafting and a ton of mats so if there's a console or weapon you or any other GWJer wants crafted, please let me know.

I've been messing around a bit with torpedo heavy builds. There is a frustrating lack of information on basic game mechanics. The most you can find sometimes is poorly written tooltips. Shields have 10% bleedthrough, so what does that mean? 10% damage leaks through and hits the hull I assume, these are the damage numbers you see in combat. Damage to shields isn't actually displayed. So how much damage does the shield take from energy weapons? How much damage does it take from kinetic weapons? The wiki and official forums aren't much help. I see a lot of people asking basic questions like this and they never get a straight answer.

Another issue is weapon procs. Everyone says procs are activated per-pulse or per-hit. If that is true then is there any reason at all to use dual heavy cannons? The only difference between heavy and non heavy cannons is the number of shots they fire. They average out to the same DPS, but with more shots you would theoretically have more chances to proc.

In other news Hargh'Peng Torpedoes are ridiculously powerful. They have a hefty cooldown, but they deal more damage than a Quantum. They have a radiation DoT that ignores shields and does about another 1000 damage over 15 seconds. And if you don't remove the DoT using hazard emitters it hits AGAIN for over 3000 damage. Did I mention these things have twice the damage radius of tricobalt torpedoes? Ridiculous. If you don't run with any torpedo BOff skills there does not seem to be any point is using other torpedoes.

The interesting thing about exchange vs crafting is the rare ingredients. It used to be that some of those (beta-tachyon, anyon, etc) would go for 70-150k in the exchange. But sometimes (especially mk IV, VI or VII) you would find the weapons or other items you created with those rare items for cheaper than the materials themselves. Part of that is that the rare materials were used for high-end mk X/XI stuff so people had millions to blow on that sort of thing.

But nowadays, with your DOFFS pulling in the extra ingredients for you, I think the prices on those special ingredients have tanked. Last I looked anyway, many of them were going for <10k prices.

So it's probably much better to craft now and build up your skill than to bother buying crafted items on the exchange.

It seems that the shared cooldown of torpedoes is 2 seconds. So if you mount 3 photon torpedo launchers you can continuously fire them. If you mount 4, one of the launchers will just sit idle.

If you mix a Quantum with a Hargh'peng, it makes for a nice one-two punch. Torpedo salvo 4 quantums, then two seconds later the Hargh'peng fires. And since it flies a LOT faster than other torpedoes it usually hits simultaneously.

I'm struggling to absorb all this. Any advice for someone still working at General Level 200? Is there something (in particular) that I should be creating in order to boost my crafting abilities? I'd like to keep an eye on accruing enough materials/expertise to buy some of the Captain-level goodies. I wonder if there's some kind of java applet out there that someone's created.

My problem is that there are so, so, so many craftable items and I have no idea how to work my way toward them. I should do a Youtube search. That really helped when it came to understanding Duty Officers.

Oh, by the way, I've got a Pinboard with a growing list of resources for STO stuff: http://pinterest.com/lakitu/star-trek-online/

So I was looking for Antigens or something in the replicator to use for a DOFF mission. And I scrolled down all the way to the bottom. And there are Hologram DOFFS you can just make for 1k!

How the hell did I never see that before?

I have seen plenty of DOFF missions that use EMH or whatever, but I always though I was just unlucky in my random DOFF draws and hadn't got one yet. Had no idea you could just make as many as you need to fill out spots.

Of course today none of my missions involved holograms. But hopefully soon I will get to use these new officers!

How (and when) do you get DOFF points? I can see a ton of DOFF's in the "store" (that round kiosk at Starfleet Command that looks like a guy trapped in a Visitor Help desk...), but I see that symbol with a red "1" in it. This tells me that yet another currency must be used, but I've yet to figure out how the heck to get those currencies.

docbadwrench wrote:

How (and when) do you get DOFF points? I can see a ton of DOFF's in the "store" (that round kiosk at Starfleet Command that looks like a guy trapped in a Visitor Help desk...), but I see that symbol with a red "1" in it. This tells me that yet another currency must be used, but I've yet to figure out how the heck to get those currencies.

As you do DOFF missions you get points for each category. Medical, Secruity, Engineering, etc. I think it's at the point each one of those levels up (0-4, you can see the list in the DOFF screen somewhere), that you get a token to recruit a new DOFF of the next highest level in that category.

This should happen when you're clicking through completed missions gathering rewards. It then pops up a window to the DOFF recruiter back on Earth (or Qo'nos) and you can click on the store and buy those officers for which you have tokens.

Today I got Nurse? rank on both my Fed captains, and got a new medical officer (counselor, since I've seen missions for those). On my 50 captain, I got a token a few weeks back for a purple DOFF, since I already had diplomacy up to rank 3 from the previous way diplomacy points worked in the game.

I think diplomacy is the only category you can earn xp for outside the DOFF system.

I'm really close to getting my first rank in DOFF Diplomacy. So, here's the next question: If I spend a point on a DOFF, would I be able to trade that person for an improvement? I ask only because I'd anticipate that I can get scant few DOFF points if I'm only getting one to spend, with each category level, if I didn't somehow get that back.

Of course, I could be underestimating how many of those little 1-point thingies I'll get.

EDIT: Wow, there is nothing out there for learning more about the crafting system. All I've encountered are a few videos by people more interested in showing us their video podcast rig or webpages with such bare information I'm half-way wondering if they're just newbie-lookin' link farms. I'll keep looking.

Tamren wrote:

It seems that the shared cooldown of torpedoes is 2 seconds. So if you mount 3 photon torpedo launchers you can continuously fire them. If you mount 4, one of the launchers will just sit idle.

On my tactical officer (currently level 47) I long ago used a torpedo build: 2 or 3 torpedo bays in front and one in back. I would hover just outside the 10km mark, arm high-yield torpedoes, wait about 25 seconds, enter within 10km, fire the high-yield bay, immediately re-activate the high-yield since its timer will have expired, fire any remaining torpedo bays, turn around, and fire my rear bay en route to crossing back out of weapons range. Repeat. I think I got to level 30 or 40 before swapping to energy weapons.

The shared cooldowns of dual heavy cannons work exactly like torpedoes. I currently run with three dual heavy cannons and one torpedo bay forward, and three turrets in the back.

Hey Keith! You're the cool guy I got to hang with last night. It was really fun watching you smash all those dozens of ships. I think I successfully insulted one or two in the nanosecond of time between when you targeted and fired.

docbadwrench wrote:

I'm really close to getting my first rank in DOFF Diplomacy. So, here's the next question: If I spend a point on a DOFF, would I be able to trade that person for an improvement? I ask only because I'd anticipate that I can get scant few DOFF points if I'm only getting one to spend, with each category level, if I didn't somehow get that back.

Of course, I could be underestimating how many of those little 1-point thingies I'll get.

Well if you notice looking at the DOFF store there are 4 of those tokens in each class. So you're just going to get one of each, might as well use it.

Once you get one you'll see. You can only use it on the first 10 or so DOFFs. The next 10 (Green ranked guys) you will get later... and then the next 10 are blue... and the last 10 are purple... all use different rank tokens within that class.

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So is this random "unexpected downtime" a new problem since it went F2P?

Don't know. But I only had set 2 of my 3 captain's DOFF assignments before it crashed.

But I guess they're not earning anything right now anyway.